Billionaire Paypal founder Peter Thiel ‘funds scheme to resurrect the woolly mammoth’

THE BILLIONAIRE founder of Paypal has reportedly funded a hugely ambitious bid to resurrect the woolly mammoth.

Peter Thiel, who also stumped up cash to help Hulk Hogan sue Gawker, has allegedly donated $100,000 (£77,000) to a scheme which will modify elephant cells using DNA recovered from the bodies of frozen mammoths.

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These massive beasts went extinct more than 10,000 years ago, although it's not clear whether humans or climate change were to blame.

Now Thiel is said to have backed Harvard University boffin George Church's attempt to bring them back to life.

The claims were published in a book called by the respected author Ben Mezrich.

“Just remember. It’s only science fiction until we remove the fiction. Then it becomes real,” one scientist told Mezrich, .

Mezrich, who wrote a book about Mark Zuckerberg which became a film called The Social Network, claimed Thiel was having breakfast with Church when he asked to fund the "craziest thing” he was working on.

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Thiel allegedly chose the mammoth, turning down an anti-aging scheme and an artificial intelligence project.

Silicon Valley billionaires are famed for ploughing their cash into bizarre and massively ambitious schemes.

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Tesla founder Elon Musk, for instance, wants to send humans to the moon.

Peter Thiel's own goal is even more forward-thinking.

He wants to "cure" death and bring about a world where humans are "a-mortal", which means we will only die if we are physically hurt.

The billionaire has a truly mammoth task ahead of him, but if his research pays off it could change the course of human history.